She headed down to the street level. The day was a nice fall day, with a slight wind from the west. She didn’t need a jacket, but in just a few weeks the leaves on the trees would change and the snow would arrive soon after.
Fall here in this part of New York State was pretty, but she had no interest in staying through another winter, even though she knew she would have to, just to make sure no suspicion fell on her.
Two blocks down from her office was a wonderful bakery called Ben’s. He had the best cinnamon rolls and actually a decent cup of coffee.
Chief Hanson sat in his normal spot near the front window, talking and laughing with two of the town’s citizens.
It seemed from what Jean had heard around town that Chief Hanson liked to be open to people coming and talking with him if he wasn’t busy on call. And he held those meetings in the main window of Ben’s Bakery.
Jean smiled as she went in to get herself a bagel with cream cheese and some hot tea. She loved the rich, thick fresh-bread smell of the bakery, mixed only slightly with the sweet odor of fresh pastries. Ben’s was one of those old-fashioned bakeries you didn’t see too often, with a dozen wooden tables and five huge antique display cabinets with the fresh cookies, pies, cakes and breads of the day.
She was going to miss this bakery more than anything about this small town.
She took her bagel and tea to go and went back into the crisp fall air. Across the river was a small rise of trees that gave clear line-of-sight to the front window where the chief always sat. She had considered killing him that way, since she was an expert sniper, but decided that it didn’t leave her a clean getaway.
So she had decided instead on a bomb, powerful, set to explode when he started his car. She could easily plant it on her break and be back in her office when the explosion occurred.
It would be too simple, actually. She had been surprised that the chief always parked his car in the exact same spot every day, secluded from sight of windows or cameras, tucked off to the west of the police station.
Clearly the chief didn’t realize that he had made someone very rich very angry.
It had taken her about a month, once she had decided on the plan, to carefully round up the ingredients needed for the bomb. Only the explosives had been a problem and she had killed the man who had delivered them just to make sure there were no connections to her.
That guy’s body would never be found. She had buried him four feet down in the woods fifty miles to the north and covered his body with a quick-acting acid. That had been three weeks ago and by now there would be nothing but a sticky mess left of that guy.
As she turned on the sidewalk to head back to work, the chief caught her eye and smiled. She smiled back and gave him a slight wave.
The chief was a friendly guy, of that there was no doubt.
And he would be worth three million to her dead.
And even though she didn’t need the money, she liked that a great deal.
CHAPTER FIVE
MARY JO HAD used a wheelbarrow to get the plastic-wrapped body of Sam the writer out and into the back of her Jeep in her garage. That had been a struggle, but luckily she was a lot stronger than her small size would show.
She had only done a surface job of cleaning. When she got back she would take care of everything completely.
Once she had good old Sam in the back of the Jeep, she had covered him in what looked to be piles of full black bags of garbage. Actually, each sack was full of nothing more than foam used in stuffing pillows and stuffed animals. She had bought the foam months earlier with the excuse of stuffing some dolls for needy kids.
But they also stuffed black garbage bags perfectly as well to look like pretend garbage headed to the landfill.
She headed north out of town, driving right at the speed limit with the window down to let in the wonderful fresh afternoon air. Fall in New York State was always a wonderful time, even though the deep snow of the winter was right around the corner.
She liked it here. Not enough to stay longer than she would need to stay, but still, it had turned into a nice place to live.
She followed an old road off the main highway until she found the turnoff she was looking for.
She had paid a man ten thousand to steal a pickup truck from a neighboring state and leave it here. The man had never seen her and she had never seen him, which kept him alive.
As of yesterday afternoon, the dark brown Ford pickup was there, hidden behind some large brush.
Wearing skintight gloves that left false fingerprints, she moved the truck around to a position behind her Jeep and lowered the tailgate. Then she slid Sam’s body into the back of the truck, making sure it was still tightly wrapped in the heavy plastic.
She moved her Jeep into the place the truck had been, out of sight, and locked it. Anyone trying to get into it without her keyed password would be killed instantly by an explosion that would leave very little left to pick up.
The drive back into town in the truck was the part that worried her the most.
She put on a long, blonde wig and a skintight face mask that gave her wide cheeks and a pointed nose.
She put on a coat with padding that made her look much larger and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses.
Even with all that, if she got stopped by the police for anything, she would have to kill the cop and abandon her plan and she hated doing that now that she was so close.
Twenty minutes later she pulled the truck into a deserted rock quarry just outside of Benton. Checking the instruments in her purse to make sure that she wasn’t being recorded in any way, she waited for a moment before climbing out.
No one around and all clear.
The sun in the bottom of the high-walled old rock quarry felt much warmer. She listened for any sounds of a car coming in the gravel road to the quarry and when she heard none, she opened the back tailgate and pulled out Sam’s body, letting it flop on the ground.
She quickly unrolled him, leaving him face-up in the sun.
Then she folded the plastic, tucked it on the passenger floor of the truck, and quickly left.
Twenty-five minutes later she had the truck back hidden in the brush and her Jeep pointed down the road.
She took off her disguise and jacket she had worn and the thin gloves that left fake fingerprints and put them all on top of the plastic on the passenger side.
Then she took a bottle of quick-acting acid from her purse and covered the pile, watching the acid melt into the fabric and plastic.
She then lit a rag on fire and tossed it into the cab of the truck.
Using another rag to close the door, she moved around to the back of the truck, took off the gas cap and dropped two capsules into the tank.
Then she turned for her Jeep.
As she buckled into her seat, she heard a solid “thump” sound as the gas tank ignited.
As she pulled away, the truck was engulfed in flames and sadly, in short order, there would be a small forest fire going.
And a torched stolen truck would be to blame.
CHAPTER SIX
JEAN FOUND IT odd that Sam wasn’t answering his cell phone. He always, with a frightening punctuality, called her at four every afternoon to see how she was doing and when she would be home.
Since Sam had agreed to stay home to write, he had decided he was going to cook for them as well. Bless his heart, he tried and sometimes his limited menu was pretty good.
Jean didn’t actually mind cooking. But to make him feel better, she had agreed. Still, she had convinced him that three times a week they deserved to go out to eat. He needed to get out of the house besides just going to the grocery store for food and the hardware store for things to fix up the house.
She stared out her window at the wonderful, warm afternoon and the beautiful small city below as the phone rang.
And with each ring she got a little more worried. He had missed his normal call a few times before, but not often enough to be a habit, so this was
strange.
Tonight she was looking forward to dinner and then a long soak in their hot tub.
She had to admit, what Sam lacked in abilities to cook, he made up for in construction skills. He had done a pretty nice job on adding in some nice features in the house, not the least of which was the wonderful hot tub on their back deck.
He had built a privacy barrier between the tub and the only neighbors who could see their deck, which allowed them to sit naked in the tub and just stare at the stars. On clear nights, the stars just seemed to really fill the sky. That was yet another advantage of living in a small town away from large cities.
The stars reminded her of simpler times thousands of years earlier. She would never want to go back to those times, but killing back then had sure been a much easier task.
Sam’s phone finally went to voice mail and she listened to his upbeat voice telling her to leave a message.
“Give me a call when you come up from the chapter you are writing,” she said and hung up.
Something didn’t feel right, but she had no idea what that something might be. But over the centuries she had learned to trust that gut feeling.
So from this moment forward, she would be extra careful. Chances are it was just Sam being an airhead.
But she had her share of enemies as well, and there was no telling when one of them would come after her.
She would have no idea how anyone would have found her, but safe was better than sorry and very dead.
And since she had lived thousands of years now, she knew how to be safe.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARY JO NEVER expected anything to lead back to her and her home, but it made no sense to take any chance when just a little bit of work would solve any problem.
After she had gotten back, she had removed all the black bags from the back of the Jeep and put them where they belonged, then had gone into the guest room, put her blouse, bra, underwear, jeans, shoes and socks in a black trash bag along with all the cloths she had used for the cleaning and set the bag near the back door.
Then she had gone to her own bedroom upstairs in the four-bedroom, two-bath suburban home, taken a shower, making sure she was clean.
Extra sure. Especially her short brown hair.
She had liked this house in the year since she and Bob had gotten married. It kind of fit a part of her that she didn’t often get to enjoy. And she knew how to play the perfect housewife role to a science.
But behind the housewife, she was a member of an ancient order of assassins. She had lived for thousands of years, as everyone in her order tended to do. And she had never grown tired of her job.
Not once. In fact, the job had gotten more and more challenging as technology improved.
She liked that and the money it supplied her to live a lavish lifestyle. She actually had no idea how rich she was, considering all of her many bank accounts around the world under all the different names. She actually didn’t need to work, she just loved her job.
There was always a challenge. And she got to meet and sometimes marry nice people as well before killing them.
After her shower, she had dressed in a similar white blouse that she had had on earlier, same style of jeans, underwear, everything, including a second pair of identical sneakers.
With a pair of white gloves on, she took the black bag and put it into the back of her Jeep along with a couple bags of normal week’s garbage. She had set this routine up a year ago. This was all normal for her, including the white gloves.
She had then driven the ten minutes to the landfill just outside of town, in the opposite direction from the rock quarry.
There she had made sure every bag was tossed over the edge of the dumping area into an area full of other black bags that a bulldozer was moving around and covering in layers of dirt.
She had paid the attendant in cash and he hadn’t even noticed her other than to nod hi as he did every week. His attention was focused on the two pickup trucks behind her full of junk.
Now she was back at her house looking at the bottle of vodka and orange juice and wondering if she dared have just one more drink.
She loved her drinks, but was very careful in the thick of a job to not drink too much.
As she stood there, staring at the fixings for a drink she felt she wanted, but wasn’t sure she needed, her cell phone went off.
It was her husband’s ring.
She answered it. “Hi, honey.”
“Afraid I’m going to be late for dinner,” he said. “Got a body.”
“Oh, no,” she said, making herself take a deep breath.
Her husband was the Chief of Police for the entire city. This call was normal. Over their year of marriage it had happened a good thirty times.
She had been responsible for a few of those bodies, just as she was for dear old Sam, more than likely the one that had just been found. But he never knew that and never would.
Actually, she had been the one who had anonymously reported Sam’s body from a burner phone she used while at the dump and then tucked into a black bag that went into the landfill. She didn’t want to chance that no one would find her bait.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “How about I wait for you and we go out to Murphy’s Diner when you are done.”
“Might get late,” he said.
“I’ll snack until you call.”
“That would be nice,” he said. He told her that he loved her and then hung up.
He was a good man.
She had enjoyed the year plus they had been together. The sex had been good, the laughter real. After centuries of living and killing, she had learned to appreciate those times even more.
She glanced at her watch. It was a quarter after five. The timing was spot on the money.
She glanced at the bottle of vodka one more time, then set it aside, put the pitcher of fresh orange juice back in the fridge and the clean glass back in the cabinet.
Maybe after her dinner.
She then took her purse and went out to her Jeep in the garage. The third row of seats were always down in her car so she could carry gardening and groceries easily.
She lifted the seat and there was the bag with a rifle in it. Also her disguise bag was there as well.
She slipped on her gloves for a moment and did a quick inventory to make sure everything was with the rifle and the disguise bag and she hadn’t forgotten anything, then lowered the seats back into place.
Fifteen minutes later she had parked her Jeep in the mall parking lot out of any camera sight. She then, when no one was around, transferred her rifle to the small Ford four-door sedan back seat and locked the car. The car was brown, with plates mostly covered in mud.
The Ford sedan had been stolen by a man she had never met and left for her, just as another man had left the pickup for her. She had paid the man ten grand for the car in a drop bag. He hadn’t asked questions.
Then, carrying her disguise bag, she went into the mall and into the public restroom as herself. She came out almost ten minutes later, after a half-dozen other women had come and gone, as a long-haired brunette with a much larger nose and a tan jacket and red tennis shoes.
She was ready to get this job done.
PART TWO
The Job
CHAPTER EIGHT
JEAN COULDN’T BELIEVE when she got home that Sam had vanished.
His cell phone was beside his computer, his car was in the garage, and the front door was unlocked.
His wallet and car keys were where he always left them in a dish in the entryway.
Jean quickly checked where they normally left notes for each other beside the fridge and there was nothing.
And no sign at all of any kind of scuffle.
She made herself do a complete check of the house. His clothes were still there, nothing had changed.
She went out into the backyard and walked the wooden fence-line, seeing if there was any sign anyone had come or gone that way.
> Nothing.
She went back in and stood in the kitchen, looking around calmly.
Sam had simply walked out of the door.
Clearly for some reason.
But where was he? And why?
She needed to be prepared because if one of her enemies had found her, she needed to be ready.
But first she needed to find out what exactly had happened to Sam.
She went to their bedroom and pushed aside some of her clothes and clicked a tiny hidden switch on the back of the closet.
The switch tested her fingerprint to make sure it was her so that no one could accidently find what was behind the panel.
A very small section of the wall slid back and a computer screen and monitor slid forward.
She triggered the proximity alert around the house in case anyone approached. She wanted to be ready if they did.
Then she brought up the security system she had installed. Every inch of this house was recorded at all times. That would have driven Sam crazy if he would have known that, but she had lived a very long time by taking no chances.
Normally she would never check on Sam, but she had to know what had happened to him.
She fast-forwarded it to a time just slightly over three hours before. Sam had been working on his book when he suddenly turned.
He stood and went to the door and talked to a woman Jean knew from three doors down the street named Mary Jo Hanson.
The wife of Jean’s target.
Mary Jo was an attractive and tiny woman with short brown hair.
Jean clicked on the sound and heard Mary Jo tell Sam that she had a light that was shorting out in her hall and would he help her fix it.
He had agreed and from an external camera Jean watched Sam go down the sidewalk to Mary Jo’s house and go in.
About thirty minutes later Mary Jo left her house in her Jeep, alone.
Smith's Monthly #31 Page 10